Background: Mental health workforce capacity has faced significant challenges which have only been exacerbated by COVID-19. Undergraduate students provide a robust entry point of a workforce pipeline, but many do not end up in mental health careers despite high levels of interest in this area. Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify…

The purpose of this study was to uncover and describe the multiple, divergent student viewpoints about an undergraduate mechanical engineering program at a public university in the US Midwest and their persistence in that program. This study uses Q methodology which mixes qualitative and quantitative research aspects to reveal and describe the…

Mentoring programs are not uncommon. In fact, they are more common than we think. Most mentoring programs and/or mentorship opportunities are informal and happen daily. While mentorship programs are common, some programs, specifically Pre-Pharmacy related, are overlooked. The lack of formalized opportunities impacts prospective students'…

While research on career paths has been studied for years, the impacts of identity rarely make it into the discussion. Leung et al. (1994) looked specifically at the factors that influence career aspirations in Asian Americans, but no South Asians were included in this work. To fill this gap, this research focused on the experience of South Asian…

There is a decline in recent years in the number of students studying chemistry in higher education. Many studies have been conducted on elementary and high school students' choice with fewer focusing on the factors that influence undergraduate students to choose to major in chemistry. Research also indicates that belonging to a minority group…

Background: A perceived fit between personal values and what a career offers is critical for college students pursuing and persisting in that career. Purpose/Hypothesis(es): We, therefore, investigated the career values of engineering undergraduates through language in two different studies. Study 1 (N = 35) examined students' written…

This paper presents the results of a large-scale survey of undergraduates in England, concerning their envisaged career choices and how they made them. This gives a more complete account of those who do and do not want to be teachers than usual in the existing literature based primarily on prospective/existing teacher accounts. The paper looks at…

Sociology undoubtedly plays an important role in the world of sciences, as it provides an opportunity to examine the society in which we live and our social relationships using widely accepted means with real scientific value. As Giddings has noted, "sociology tells us how to become what we want to be" (Giddings, 2011). However,…

There has been a sustained interest in student perceptions about STEM fields and their choice of careers over the past few decades. Research has shown that there is a decline in students pursuing STEM careers, and this has raised global concern. Despite these issues, no unistructural, broad, parsimonious and unambiguous quantitative instrument…

Introduction: The learning approach of undergraduate medical students can be influenced by motivations toward learning medicine as well as perceived outcomes such as their specialty preference in the future. In this study, we analyze the relationships between learning approach, motivation to study medicine, and factors related to their specialty…

In both the educational and business environments, two trends may be inarguable. The difference between the demand of technology positions as compared to the number of people majoring or interested in technology-based careers. Secondly, the education environment is radically changing in several aspects including a high number of undecided majors…

Biomedical engineering is a broad and interdisciplinary field that prepares graduates for a variety of careers across multiple career sectors. Given this breadth, undergraduate degree programs often have formal or informal opportunities for students to further specialize within the biomedical engineering major to develop skills in subdisciplines…

Providing infrastructure to support student-led research teams at research-extensive universities has been an effective way of dramatically increasing the number of research opportunities available to all undergraduates. While cocurricular, team-based programs are able to scale-up and sustain undergraduate research, their ability to promote…

The purpose of this study was to understand undergraduate students' perceptions of the teaching profession and how these perceptions influence their decision to enter, or not, the teaching profession in the state of Illinois. The Illinois Association of Regional Superintendent of Schools (2023) survey reported 79% of schools say they have a…

As the field of school psychology has expanded, the workforce has not, resulting in critical shortages at both the trainer and practitioner levels. Additionally, practitioners who are racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse are underrepresented in the field, despite the growing diversity of our nation's schools. The purpose of this paper…